Gilbert Meilaender

Over the last several decades the academic study of religion has been
marked by a debate that, put much too simply, pits a "Yale school"
against a "Chicago school." The Yale school has been associated
especially with the names of George Lindbeck and the late Hans Frei, the
Chicago school especially with David Tracy. But, of course, each school
of thought is also represented by its graduate students, who have themselves
become teachers in the academy.

Probably any simple description of the terms of this debate will seem
to those involved to lack sufficient nuance, but we may hazard a few general
observations. It is, in some respects, an argument between those who want
to continue the Enlightenment project of making religion intelligible to
its cultured despisers (Chicago), and those who hold that believers should
concentrate on developing the particularities of their faith, whether that
outlook makes sense to outsiders or not (Yale). It is a debate between
those who want to translate Christian categories into terms thought to
make sense to our contemporaries-and those who believe that this is the
quickest way to irrelevance, and that Christians should not accommodate
their views to the seeming "norms" of contemporary experience.
So, for example, for one view the Christian ideal of love is probably best
translated into language about respect for the dignity of every human being.
For the other view the meaning of Christian love must grow out of the biblical
story of God's love and commitment to Israel and to the world-especially,
the story of that love enacted in Jesus.

The alternatives as I have depicted them here are perhaps too stark,
and the issues are surely complicated, but one thing is clear. One might
anticipate that adherents of the Yale school, having made their claim about
the proper method for studying religion, would get on with the job of theological
reflection itself. To continue forever reworking the debate about method
is almost to undercut the force of their claims. Yet, paradoxically, relatively
little first-order theological work has actually emerged from the Yale
school thus far. Narratives of a Vulnerable God is, however, a happy
exception to that claim. In seven engagingly written and clearly argued
chapters William Placher has taken up important theological themes-discussing
the nature of God, the story of Jesus in the Gospels, and the character
of Christian community.

The book is, however, more captive to current assumptions than its
author sometimes supposes, and I note a few examples here at the outset
as a way of freeing myself to turn to other, more useful, topics. Placher
is sensitive to a fault; nevertheless, an author should not be allowed
more than one reference to the fact that he is a privileged white male.
(And in connection with that reference, having been duly abject, he ought
probably to note his good fortune in having attained a position in the
academy before his status became something less than a privilege.) Introducing
and appropriating Heidegger's discussion of time, Placher is a little apologetic.
Given what we now know of Heidegger's personal and political failings,
that is understandable. But, of course, no similar apologies are offered
when he draws upon the thought of, say, Foucault, about whom we also now
know a good bit. He approves the fact that early Christian communities
were countercultural enough to challenge patriarchal social structures
of their time but is less eager to consider that Christian communities,
since they are always countercultural, might also have to challenge some
currently fashionable feminist claims. He is worried that Christian calls
to preserve the family bond even at the cost of self-sacrifice ignore the
needs of abused women and children, but he does not seem equally worried
that we are swimming in a divorce culture terribly harmful to children.
Because entry into a country club requires approval of a membership committee,
he notes (rightly enough) that exclusion, snobbery, and bigotry lie near
at hand. But he does not also contemplate the way in which friendship necessarily
excludes (without being exclusivistic). In his attempt to make vulnerability
central to our understanding of God, he finds little if anything good to
say about power. Eusebius is simply "Constantine's court flunky."
And, acknowledging that Christians may sometimes feel driven to use force
in a sinful world, he characterizes such a choice as "always"
a betrayal of the "image of the power of love we have encountered
in the powerless Jesus on the cross." The possibility that force might
itself be a work of Christian love-that, as Calvin put it, the magistrate
who refuses to bloody his sword dishonors God-is one that a Presbyterian
theologian might take more seriously. In short, he mirrors the values and
assumptions of the academy and much of our elite culture more faithfully
than he seems to realize.

Nonetheless, Placher aims to be a theologian and a churchman, and there
is much in this book that invites our own theological reflection in response.
The structure of the book is roughly as follows. Three chapters argue that
love, not power, is the defining characteristic of God, that God's eternity
should not be described in a way that frees him from the burdens of time,
and that the image of God as Triune is precisely an image of mutual love.
Chapter four seeks to ground this vision of God in the New Testament Gospels-but
always reading those Gospels in a manner that does not allow only one strand
of the narrative to exercise power over other strands. In the fifth chapter
Placher takes up briefly three critiques of that story of Jesus-that it
presents a male savior who must be oppressive to women, that it presents
a suffering savior who encourages victims to accept their oppression, and
that it presents a unique savior whose claims must be offensive to adherents
of other religious traditions. The last two chapters focus on community-the
community of the Church, and the attempt to live as a faithful member of
the Church within other communities (here, chiefly, the academy). In my
own view, chapters three and four-discussing respectively the Trinity and
the stories of Jesus in the Gospels-are the strongest and most interesting
chapters in the book.

Perhaps the book's central claim-certainly its first-is that we must
overcome the tendency in Christian thought to emphasize God's power or
God's invulnerability to the suffering that fills our world. Placher notes
that a God defined solely in terms of power could not be relied upon to
deliver us, for power itself is no guarantee of concern. Similarly, confessing
God as Triune, Christians worship not One who is isolated in self-sufficient
power, but One whose very inner being is marked by the reciprocities of
mutual love. This "loss of self- independence in relation does not
threaten individual identity but precisely creates it" in the being
of God.

Surely Placher here unfolds a theme that has often been and should
be a central emphasis in Christian proclamation. I suspect, however, that
he must eventually qualify his claim more carefully if he does not wish
to undercut the gospel itself. So worried is he that the image of a powerful
God "comports well with many of the values that contemporary society
still holds" that he largely ignores the fact that this image also
expresses our creatureliness-our sense of contingency and dependence. Placher
himself understands this, of course; he notes that avoiding the language
of power risks avoiding talk of God as our creator and sustainer. Nevertheless,
he does largely avoid such talk. If the desire for a powerful god reflects
some of our values, the desire for a (simply) vulnerable god may equally
well reflect our contemporary fear of dependence upon God.

More important, however, an understanding of God as the powerful Creator
on whom our existence depends is the necessary background for hearing the
story of Jesus as gospel-for hearing it as the surprising and unexpected
good news that the powerful God who created us is beside us and for us.
Apart from that background, the story of Jesus can only be news, not the
good news that it is. Similarly, the chapter on the Church as community
perhaps moves too quickly to a conception of preaching as "retelling
the stories" and underplays thereby the essential gospel proclamation
that in the Jesus of these stories the powerful God is "for us."
In short, Placher's instructive reading of the Gospels needs to place those
narratives within the context of the larger biblical narrative-within the
context of the Hebrew Bible, which is also Scripture for Christians.

At certain moments Placher himself must, in fact, appeal precisely
to the language of power in order to depict accurately the message of the
Gospels. For example, responding to the charge that the story of Jesus
encourages victims to accept their suffering, and seeking a way to urge
victims to fight back and avoid victimization, he notes that Jesus' suffering
is not that of a passive victim. Rather, it is "the suffering of someone
out to win in the struggle with evil" (emphasis added). He affirms
language that speaks of Christ engaged in conflict, defeating the forces
of evil, and winning a decisive victory. Thus, it turns out, "orthodox
Christology does not offer a model of lying down and letting evil roll
over you." Resisting such evil is not, it now appears, a "betrayal"
of the gospel of the cross. In other words, in order to come to terms with
a norm of contemporary culture, he has inverted the Augustinian-and, I
think, better-notion that force used in defense of oneself is suspect,
but force used in defense of the needy neighbor may be a work of love.
To the degree that we seek to let biblical narrative depict the world within
which we live, there is much to be said for that Augustinian view, however
out of step with currently popular affirmations of the self it may be.
And if we have succeeded in being this countercultural, we may also find
more room than Placher does for other forms of power in service of others-for
example, a hierarchically ordered ministry within the church.

There is much else here that might also serve as food for reflection:
Placher's willingness to identify becoming a Christian with entrance into
a Christian community (contrary to the recent emphasis upon individual
spirituality), his very clear discussion of the psychological and social
analogies for the Trinity, a brief but helpful discussion of the relation
between historical research and the Gospels, an equally brief but equally
helpful treatment of the relation of Christian faith to other faiths, and
his seasoned and experienced discussion of the possibility of teaching
Christian theology in the pluralistic academy. But questions of power and
vulnerability are at the heart of the book, and if Placher's argument on
those questions does not fully satisfy, it will nonetheless stimulate continued
reflection on a topic of genuine theological significance.